


Exuvia

by falsechaos



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Post Avengers (Movie), Sort of slashy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-11
Updated: 2013-02-11
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsechaos/pseuds/falsechaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki snarls behind his muzzle and rattles the chains binding his hands until the scrape and screech of metal is enough to satisfy his need to scream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exuvia

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for umakoo:  
> http://umakoo.tumblr.com/post/42845158234/i-can-haz-post-avengers-fic-where-thor-takes-loki

Loki was ever vain.

His hair curls and clumps at the base of his neck, sticks to his throat and forehead. The sour reek of sweat and blood hangs in the air around him. Loki shuffles on his knees and his leathers creak with him. They are no longer soft and supple, but have become stiff with dust and stained with grim. He glares at his warden and his green eyes are poison bright and poison bitter. His hands are chained before him and those chains bound further still until he is at the center of a metallic web that binds his strength and magic and mobility.

Even still, he holds himself like a defiant king instead of conquered traitor.

Thor has only a bucket of piss warm water and a single rag.

“The guards advised I toss it over you and be done with it,” Thor says and hefts up the bucket as though Loki couldn’t see it dangling from his grip. He grins, but it is weak and half-hearted and flickers away.

Loki snorts and glares through a fringe of greasy bangs.

“Brother, I would not have you appear before our father as such—”

Loki snarls behind his muzzle and rattles the chains binding his hands until the scrape and screech of metal is enough to satisfy his need to scream. His chest heaves and his breath comes out in snorts and snarls through his flared nostrils.

“I would not,” Thor says again. Gentle, hands raised, as though soothing a panicking horse. “Let me satisfy your vanity.” His lips thin and for a moment he cannot meet Loki’s harsh glare. “And my own guilty conscience for dragging my brother back muzzled like a mad dog.”

A high keening rips from Loki’s throat and he struggles towards his feet, surging and struggling against his chains for every inch of purchase he can gain beneath his heel to lunge at Thor. The chains stop him just short of rising in a rough crouch and he strains against even that, even when crimson sparks dance along the links and snap against his skin

“Brother, stop!” Thor grabs a handful of chains and yanks and Loki goes crashing back to his knees with a loud crack of bone against stone floor. “Loki, *stop!*”

Loki does not.

Red sparks snap at prisoner and warden alike and Thor’s hands prickle and burn. He does not yield. Not when Loki growls low in his throat and his eyes go wide and mad and his wrists begin to bleed. Thor does not yield when Loki struggles until the chains drag Thor to his knees as well. Both of them pant harsh and raw and Thor can taste the copper tang of fresh blood in the air, both his own and Loki’s.

Loki eventually stills.

The bucket of water is still warm enough to sting Thor’s hands and his palms are red and raw for all that the skin is not yet broken. “I will bathe you now, brother.” He pauses a moment and waits for another fit, but Loki snorts and glares at Thor in sullen silence.

Thor unsnaps what he can, sliding the worn straps apart until the single pauldron could be pulled from Loki’s shoulder. Thor sets it aside. The cuffs at Loki’s wrists dig beneath his vambraces and Thor sets those aside as well. There are layers upon layers piled on Loki and not all of it is armor or clothing. What skin Thor can find is sickly white where it is not bruised and yellowed, and there Loki is colored like herbs, lavender and saffron stark next to pale shades that have not seen the sun in untold ages. Loki sits still and stiff through every part of it and wears his brittle pride as a cloak about his bare shoulders when Thor pulls back Loki’s outer coat to bunch about his elbows.

His back is a roadmap of agony.

Scars, delicate and thin, curve and twine about the top of his spine like serpents. A narrow crevice dips in one shoulder blade beneath his skin, all the more glaring for the smooth roll of his arms. Another wound long since healed. Thor pulls outer coat and undershirt down further until Loki’s arms are pinned at his sides and Thor can see the twisting of lines around backbone continue down and disappear under the waistband of Loki’s pants. He frames them with trembling hands, palms splayed wide on Loki’s back, fingertips dipping into the ridges of Loki’s ribs, rubbing as though he can erase them from his brother’s skin.

Loki draws in a sharp hiss through his nose. He shivers once, a faint vibration that echoes from his scalp to his toes, before forcing himself still once more.

“What has happened to you, Loki?” Thor dips the rag in the luke warm water and drags it down Loki’s back. It is course and brown, better suited to mopping mead off a table. But it is clean and cuts through the grim and stink accumulated under Loki’s clothing. Thor wrings it out over the floor where it can drain out instead of trying to rinse it in the bucket. His brother holds himself stiff as stone through every swipe, every rub of the rag against his back. Thor counts each sharp intake of breath Loki takes in place of wincing and scatters the numbers when they grow too high. He touches what he can, what is exposed, maps every inch of skin as though he can write a log of Loki’s journey and follow the same path to lead him back to his brother again.

Thor pulls out a small knife. It is the same small knife Loki used to stab him on Stark’s tower. It is not meant to saw through leather and fabric, it is meant to pierce and to cut, small and balanced and disposable. Thor follows the seams as best he can and makes his cuts as tidy as he can even while knowing the clothes he tries to take such care with will likely be burned instead of mended. He will offer his brother that small dignity if he can.

He has never thought of his brother as soft. Strange and foolish in some things, weak in judgement in others, but Thor was warrior enough to know the value in the quick, accurate strikes Loki was capable of. The Loki he finds under the stiff leathers and matted fabrics is another creature entirely. Thin and marked as he is, this Loki is whipcord thin beneath his armor, bones knotted together with muscle and sinew and little else. He looks starved in the manner of a vicious wolf whose hunger has given it the courage to take down prey thrice its size. This bitter man is every bit the warrior Thor once wished to have stand behind him.

The thought makes him sick.

Thor swallows hard and tries to catch Loki’s eyes, but even kneeling directly before him Loki stares through him and past him, thousands of miles beyond where Thor can reach him. Thor wants to shout, wants to rage and pull on the chains that bind Loki’s mind and soul until his brother is still enough to catch and bring back out into the light and out of his self-imposed darkness. This bitter silence is not a battle he knows how to fight.

“Is this better?” Thor’s mouth is dry. “Is your pain and suffering so noble that you must make it larger than everything else? That… that you must turn *everything* in our past into a lie just to satisfy it?” He leans forward and rests his forehead against Loki’s shoulder. He breaths in the bitter musk of his brother’s blood and sweat. “Are we that small? You loved us—”loved *me*—enough to risk war to stop me from becoming king before I was ready. Was that a lie as well?”

Loki begins to shake.

Thor pulls back and Loki’s eyes are bright and wet and narrowed. Thor looks away. He ducks the rag back into the half-empty bucket and scrubs at Loki’s arms and chest. He is close enough and there is room enough that Loki could wrap those chains around his neck and Thor finds himself unable to care. “Hold still,” Thor snaps even though Loki moves only to beat his heart and fill his lungs. “Just be still.” The rag bites into the raw skin at Loki’s wrists and blood drips down his fingertips and Thor wipes that away as well, grabbing Loki’s long fingers one by one and digging under his fingernails.

“Be still,” Thor whispers and wrings out the rag, not caring that the dirty water is seeping into his pants instead of flowing towards the drain.

“Still.”

The brown rag turns black and Thor flings it to the floor and grabs the small knife again and cuts through Loki’s pants. It grows dull in his grasp and he flings it aside to clatter in the corner, grabbing a handful of fabric in either hand and *ripping* it away.

“Be still.” The words are harsh and hushed and almost growled and Thor knocks over the small pile of clothing he had so carefully folded, pauldron rattling against the stone floor.

“Please.”

Loki looks at him wide eyed and he makes no move to pull away even when Thor’s hands leave fresh marks upon his thighs or when Thor plunges a scrap of Loki’s shirt into the bucket and begins to scrub him with that.

Thor scrubs until the green scrap turns brown turns black and old wounds seep new blood and still his hands are stained with it for all he tries to make Loki’s clean.

“Please.”

Thor hides his face against Loki’s throat. Loki smells of water and stone and copper. The chains chime softly. Something cool and wet wipes across the back of his neck. He looks up.

Loki wipes the blood from Thor’s hands.


End file.
